Abstract
On 23 June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU). The result sent shockwaves throughout the UK and Europe, for although polls predicted a close race, the decision to change so suddenly and radically the course of Britain’s history was a rather unexpected outcome. Academics, journalists and politicians have, since then, been trying to make sense of the results. Some more or less clear voting patterns are now visible. Working class and uneducated demographics were more likely to vote to leave the EU, with immigration and sovereignty topping their agenda. The vote against the EU was in fact also a vote for a particular idea of England, where economic issues are wrapped up in issues of (national) identity. The sharp divisions the referendum served to animate were, therefore, both economic and cultural.
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Notes
- 1.
Friedrich Hayek, for example, disagreed with the German ordoliberals regarding the conditions under which freedom and competition arise (Bröckling 2016).
- 2.
Anyone familiar with the work of these critical theorists will have noticed my omission of one of the principle of immanence’s key functions from the list provided, namely, the discovery of internal contradictions. My reason for doing so is simple: the internal contradictions of capitalism, old and new, have already been astutely explored by these critical theorists and more recent ones such as David Harvey (2014). Here, however, I chose to concentrate on those elements I regard as most important for conceptualizing a form of coalitional politics adapted to the neoliberal age, namely the specific forces at work in fragmenting and uniting diverse forms of political struggles.
- 3.
Nancy Fraser (2003) did nevertheless aim to fill this gap. However, as will be shown in Part III of this book, she excluded nature from the scope of her analysis.
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Masquelier, C. (2017). Introduction. In: Critique and Resistance in a Neoliberal Age. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40194-6_1
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